


The Wings of Morpheus

by Magical_Destiny



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamscapes, Falling In Love, Hannibal Loves Will, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 15:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11854176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magical_Destiny/pseuds/Magical_Destiny
Summary: For Hannibal, the barrier between dreams and reality is hard to find—especially when it comes to Will.Or: One time Hannibal didn’t dream about Will, and five times he did.





	The Wings of Morpheus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hannibalnuxvoxmica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalnuxvoxmica/gifts).



> Based on this prompt from [hannibalnuxvoxmica:](http://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalnuxvoxmica)
> 
>   _I've read a lot of fics where Will is dreaming about Hannibal, and those are some of my favorite fics, but I don't think I've ever read one where Hannibal is dreaming about Will, and that got me thinking: if Hannibal were to have some kind of idyllic, even drug-addled and high post-fall dream about Will (though not required!), what would that look like? Would it be too heart-wrenchingly sweet that we would all die from it? Almost definitely._
> 
> This was such a lovely prompt! I loved the idea of exploring Hannibal’s dreams, a place where he might have a little less control than in his waking life. And tracking the appearance of Will in that dreamscape? YES, PLEASE. Will bursts into Hannibal’s life like Randall Tier through a window, and I loved the idea that maybe he also burst into his subconscious. I veered away from the details of your prompt a little because my inspiration is a wild and unpredictable thing, but there IS some post-fall dreaming, and, most importantly, a bit of post-fall Hannigram. I also included excerpts from Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale" because, let’s face it, I’m a sappy loser. Honestly just carve “sappy!Hannigram” on my tombstone and call it a day. ;) Anyway, I hope this fic is everything you wanted! Happy Birthday. <3

~*~

_Was it a vision, or a waking dream?  
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?_

_-John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale”_

__

_~*~_

Hannibal knows he dreams less often than would be considered quite normal. He doesn’t give the matter much thought; it’s not, after all, the only or most significant way he deviates from societal medians and norms. His patients, by contrast, often come to their appointments ready to spin long tales about their dreams, wringing their hands over their meaning. Convinced their dreams have an almost mystical power to illuminate their hearts and lives. 

Hannibal avoids the grating and dubious act of dream interpretation whenever possible. Dreams are most often childishly simple—brief flashes of fears, worries, or hopes—or they are utter nonsense. His patients gaze at him with wide, forlorn eyes, blinking as they wait for his verdict. He manufactures patience in those moments, for he can find none of his own. 

He knows his distaste for dreams has deep roots in his past. He remembers nothing but nightmares after Mischa’s death. For years afterward, his mind had betrayed him in sleep, dredging up every image and emotion he had classified and controlled during his waking hours. He’s much better now, and hardly dreams at all. 

The distaste lingers. 

“Your life is not held in thrall to the power of dreams,” he tells his patients again and again. “Imagination is a much more useful exercise. Craft a waking dream. Picture your future. Shape it.” It’s nearly always an effective method. 

He doesn’t confide to them that he has done the very same thing—or attempted to. Like any other feat of planning or creativity, it should be a rewarding exercise. But he doesn’t feel rewarded when he makes the attempt to cast his mind far into his own future. Failure is not a familiar sensation, but the restless impatience that stirs in his chest is something akin to it. All his life he’s set goals for himself, decided on courses of action that would yield his desired results. But when he tries to cast his mind further forward, to flow in pure whimsy and desire, he can’t seem to find the current. 

“What do you want?” he asks his patients to focus them. 

What Hannibal wants is precisely what he already has: a life of secret pleasures, public favor, and ubiquitous accomplishment. Perhaps that is why he does not dream. He doesn’t lack anything. 

The uneasy sensation of falling short still itches on his skin, but Hannibal dismisses it. He isn’t entirely sure why he tried this exercise anyway. 

~*~

_My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains_  
_My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,_  
_Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains_  
_One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk…_

_~*~_

Will Graham is a strange creature. They meet in Jack Crawford’s office, a small, square room covered in photos of bodies. It’s a space stuffed with even more death than a moldering coffin; Hannibal has never been more thrilled in his life. Will is all edges and barbs: the signposts pointing the way to fear. It doesn’t take Hannibal long to decipher what he’s afraid of, for it’s right there in the room with them. 

Will Graham is afraid of _himself_. 

Will leaves their meeting abruptly. He takes his foul mood with him and trails indignation in his wake, but he isn’t at all like the rude people Hannibal disdains. He leaves a pleasant impression that can’t easily be forgotten. Unsmiling, angry, afraid. Full of nothing but _potential._

He finds himself wondering about the contents of Will’s dreams. He can imagine them, blood-soaked, roiling things, full of shapeless dark and harrowing fear. He can imagine because Will’s waking mind seems to contain the very same things, buried beneath all his efforts to contain them. But the sleeping mind uncovers what the waking one buries, as Hannibal knows all too well. He resolves to introduce the topic of dreams into their conversations as soon as possible. 

The perfect moment never seems to arrive as their conversations continue, week after week. Hannibal forgets his desire to hear about Will’s dreams for days at a time, too engrossed by all the topics Will _does_ speak about. He has an exquisite mind, sharp and bloody as a well-honed blade. Hannibal finds himself constantly running his fingers over the edge, pressing as hard as he can to feel its bite. He wonders whether it will draw his blood eventually. 

Hannibal wakes one night with a dream still behind his eyes. It gutters like a flame, leaving a pulsing afterimage. 

Will. 

It was a strangely peaceful and pointless dream. Will standing near him. Talking about something, but the words evade Hannibal’s grasp as the dream fades. His mind had summoned a scenario of easy intimacy untouched by blood or suffering or even intelligible speech. 

The thought of desiring companionship is a strange one. 

Hannibal realizes he’s sitting upright, staring at nothing, and lays back again to sleep. He holds the images of the dream close, turning them over in his mind. Sleep eludes him as he studies the picture his mind has painted for him. At last, he perceives an oddity. 

In his dream, Will was smiling. 

~*~

__

_That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,  
And with thee fade away into the forest dim…_

_~*~_

Will’s absence is as sharp as a knife in Hannibal’s side. 

It had been necessary to send Will to prison for a while, both to deflect the Ripper investigation away from himself and to catalyze Will’s ongoing metamorphosis. Alchemy of the mind and heart is never a simple thing, after all. It’s all necessary, justified, and perfectly sensible—but Hannibal can’t seem to dislodge the tightness in his chest when Will’s weekly appointment arrives and Will himself fails to appear. He sits across from the empty chair and studies it. Feels himself waiting for Will even though he knows where he is and why he isn’t here. 

Hannibal wonders what sort of alchemy is occurring in his own heart and mind. 

He returns home and pours himself a glass of wine. Every night he’s tempted to uncork the bottle Will had brought him. He’d driven so far only to deliver the wine, offer his assurances that he would be terrible company, and slip away before any of Hannibal’s dinner guests could see him. The most unique and extraordinary guest, so determined to hide himself. Will Graham is indeed a strange creature. Hannibal eyes the bottle Will gave him and leaves it untouched.

His house is dark and silent and his footsteps echo on the hardwood floors. The air holds the stillness of a tomb when he finally takes himself off to bed. Hannibal has never been so uncomfortable in this house before. No bad memories have left their fingerprints on the objects around him; the walls hold nothing but the vibrations of pleasant dinners, conversations, and memories. No, it’s not a fullness that has distracted him. 

It’s a lack. 

Hannibal begins to consider when and how he might release Will. It’s a comforting thought, and he drifts off to sleep feeling much more content. 

He dreams he is seated at the head of his dining room table. Will is seated at his elbow, gilded by firelight as they eat together. 

A rush of warmth floods Hannibal from head to foot. He _missed_ Will, he realizes, marveling at the sensation. But their separation is over now. He searches Will’s face for any trace of anger or fear or reluctance, but there is only a smile, bright and searing as a flame. Hannibal stares at it. 

Will leans toward him and kisses him slow and sweet. It seems the most natural progression of events, and Hannibal shifts into the touch—

He is awake again. The night is heavy and silent and Will is not here. Hannibal analyzes his dream instead of the sudden emptiness in his chest. Dreams are not always indicative of literal desires, nor are they particularly trustworthy guideposts to wants and needs. Hannibal still feels as though he’s discovered something about himself. 

He lies awake for a long time, considering the burst of something bright and terrifying he’d felt when Will leaned close. It’s a fruitless endeavor in the end, as most dream interpretation is. 

Dreams are often simple enough to interpret, but not so simple to comprehend. 

~*~

__

_Forlorn! the very word is like a bell  
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!_

_~*~_

As a young man, Hannibal dreamed in blood. 

He learned to keep Mischa’s screams behind locked doors so they couldn’t find him in sleep, but the blood was always with him. He saw it, long strips in the snow. Bloody trails melting deep before turning to ice. He longed to wipe them away, clawed at them sometimes, and only succeeded in spreading the stains. Time and focus accomplished what willpower could not, and the dreams faded with the stretch of the years.

But Time is not always kind, and a few months is sufficient to unearth what many years had buried. Hannibal dreams in blood again. He finds himself lying in great warm pools of it, staring at Will’s pained face beside him. 

“You didn’t want it,” Hannibal tries to say, but his voice is frozen. Will hears him anyway. 

“Didn’t I?” he asks, and blood drips from his mouth. 

Hannibal wonders when he will wake up. 

He blinks and finds himself in the house on the bluff. He knows it’s locked and empty and impossibly far away, but for the moment he’s standing in its kitchen, swirling butter in a skillet. The oven is warm in front of him. There’s music coming from behind him, a piano playing something simple and sweet. _Cantabile_ , he thinks. _Singing tone._ Even a piano can sing with joy under the right circumstances. He knows without looking that the table is set for three. The piano stops. 

“Smells good,” says Abigail’s voice. “What are we having?”

“Toast and preserves,” Hannibal answers automatically. “And pancetta. Would you like some eggs?”

“Pancetta?” she asks, leaning on the counter beside him. 

“Fancy bacon,” Will interrupts from the kitchen threshold. His eyes are free of the heat of either fever or anger, and he’s smiling in a relaxed way Hannibal hasn’t seen since the early days of their acquaintance. He glances from Will to Abigail and it takes him a long moment to connect their expressions and body language to the word _happy._

Will raises an eyebrow at him. When he speaks, his words hold easy humor with no poison behind it. 

“Hannibal, you’re burning the butter.” 

He looks away for the barest moment, just enough time to turn off the heat and set aside the pan. The gleaming metal is scorched. Strange that’s it’s already hopelessly blackened, but then destruction only ever needs a moment to do its work. He turns back. 

The kitchen is empty. 

Of course it is, he thinks. There’s no one here. 

He opens his eyes. The plaster ceiling of Dr. Fell’s Florentine apartment comes into focus in the space of a few blinks. Bedelia’s airy perfume is emanating from the doorway. 

“I thought I heard something,” she says, cool and unconcerned. Observing with her hard eyes and speaking without compunction. “But I suppose you were only dreaming.” She punctuates the statement with a sip from her wineglass. Her shadow slides across the floor as she disappears into the hall. 

The citrusy notes in her perfume remind him forcefully of Freddie Lounds. Not that there is any great similarity between the fragrances. It may be another type of association. Disappointment, perhaps. 

He wonders what Will dreams. 

~*~

__

_Already with thee! Tender is the night,_  
_And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,_  
_Cluster’d around by her starry Fays;_  
_But here there is no light…_

__

_~*~_

Hannibal Lecter’s trial is heralded as the Trial of the Century even before it begins. The newspapers quote the psychiatrists tasked with evaluating him, refraining from garish terms like “psycho” in their nevertheless sensational headlines. _Hannibal the Cannibal_ becomes a common phrase overnight, but the respectable news outlets maintain a veneer of dignity over the voyeuristic horror. The tabloids have no such limitations. 

_Psychopath Doctor Cannibalizes Patients,_ their headlines scream in boldface type. _TattleCrime_ is particularly crass in its revelry. He reads the articles during the long days of his trial. 

_Dr. Lecter is not the only psychopath this reporter has seen,_ says Freddie Lounds, with her typical blend of tasteless sensationalism and arrogance. _He is unique in many respects, but he has one trait in common with those others: a complete lack of remorse or fear._

Will is forced to appear at the trial to offer testimony. He looks pale and drained, as though he spends each night drinking instead of sleeping. There’s a wall behind his eyes. He doesn’t look at Hannibal, even when he’s instructed to point him out as part of his cross-examination. Day after day, Hannibal waits for him to look. 

He finally does when Hannibal is removed from the courtroom for the last time after sentencing. The chains of his restraints jangle a discordant melody as he turns his face to watch Will where he sits, as always, in the very corner of the courtroom. He looks as dark as a bruise against the plain white wall behind him. He looks up in the last moment before Hannibal is led through the doorway. The wall behind his eyes is unshakeable. 

Hannibal holds that look in his mind during the slow drive to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Alana and a team of orderlies are waiting to receive him when he arrives at the place where he’s meant to spend the rest of his life. 

His cell is a cage constructed of white walls, thick glass, and empty bookshelves. He thinks Alana says something about providing him books based on good behavior, but he isn’t really listening. 

The shut of a door, the scrape of a system of locks, and he’s alone again. 

_A complete lack of remorse or fear,_ Hannibal remembers. It’s true; he is not afraid. But when he thinks of the dead look behind Will’s eyes, he feels something which, if not quite remorse, is something painfully close to it.

Months pass in a constant stream of white. He stares at the white of his walls, of the sketching paper Alana provides. The food is tasteless at best and revolting at worst, but there is some talk of his being allowed to cook on occasion if his model behavior continues. His only visitors are eager psychiatric types, ready to dig into his mind like a cheap meal. His life is maddeningly predictable and pleasureless. He spends more and more time exploring the landscapes of his mind, where there is color and beauty and life. 

When he sleeps, new dreams come to him. 

He dreams Alana comes to inform him of Will’s death. “A freak accident,” she tells him sometimes. “No one could have predicted it.” 

_God could,_ Hannibal thinks. _This is his revenge._

Sometimes Alana tells him that Will killed himself. Hannibal hates that iteration of the dream the most. He wants to shatter the glass of his cell and cut everyone to pieces at the thought that Will might put such an insuperable barrier between them. That he might choose to go where he knows Hannibal can’t immediately follow. 

When he wakes, the knowledge that Will is alive is nearly overwhelming. Death is not standing between them. 

Months turn into one year and then two. Hannibal realizes that Will has selected another barrier to erect between them: the cruel drag of Time. Will can grow old beyond Hannibal’s sight. He can have a quiet life where Hannibal can’t see him. 

Hannibal thinks of Tuscany. Yellow sun spilling across the vineyards there, illuminating the living vines with their vibrant fruit—and the pruned vines fading to nothing but dry twigs starved of life. Pruning is a violent act: sharp-bladed shears slice tender green bark like flesh and snap thick stems like bone. The vines glisten and almost appear to bleed. He wonders if Will has pruned him from his life for good. 

Surely Will won’t hold out forever. He might, however, hold out just long enough. Will doesn’t care for his own health or safety. Even if he did, the universe is full of mischance. He could have an accident. Hannibal had never seen a complete family health history. Cancer or heart disease might run in his family. 

Hannibal himself is growing older, and his deal with Alana will not apply to any other wardens who come after her. She has a family and will want to retire in peace one day. Hannibal knows the day might come when he’s cast into the general population with the other inmates of the BSHCI. All another prisoner would need is focus enough to strike a blow and the luck to land it in a fatal place. Killing is not such a difficult feat, after all. 

Hannibal sleeps more than he ever has and dreams often. When he’s awake, he remains, for the most part, in his own mind. He explores the half-constructed halls leading to the rooms where his plans for himself and Will and Abigail had once hung like gauze. Thinly-woven and translucent, barely existing at all. So easy to tear, in the end. They appear as shreds when he looks at them again. Ripped apart by his hands, and Will’s. He closes the doors to those rooms behind him. 

He opens new wings in his mind devoted entirely to a new future. He tries to guide his thoughts into a multiplicity of possibilities, but he finds Will in every room.

The fearful dreams persist. 

Hannibal tell himself he is confident of Will’s return, but his sleeping mind is more honest. In his dreams he fears he might never see Will again.

__

_~*~_

__

_Darkling I listen; and, for many a time_  
_I have been half in love with easeful Death,_  
_Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,_  
_To take into the air my quiet breath;_  
_Now more than ever seems it rich to die,_  
_To cease upon the midnight with no pain,_  
_While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad_  
_In such an ecstasy!_

__

_~*~_

Water and memory are just alike. Both run hot and cold, surge and recede, cleanse and drown. Hannibal is caught in a powerful current. 

He’s so cold that his muscles are locked, but pain lances through his core in a concentrated line of heat. He hears his name—or perhaps not. After a moment, he can’t hear anything at all. 

He can’t see, but he’s surrounded in snow nonetheless. He knows what’s coming before the images arrive with the stark burst of a flame catching tinder. Mischa stands before him. Her scream comes to him as if from a great distance, swelling into a wail shrill enough to make his ears bleed. He covers his ears, but the screaming is coming from within and without. He can’t control it anymore than he can control himself. 

The pain of Mischa’s loss arrives with a sudden crushing force he hasn’t felt since that first moment of realization. He doesn’t know what’s awakened the pain. The control he lacks flows away from him like blood; he imagines if he could turn to look, he’d find a long, steaming trail of it behind him. 

_Hannibal?_

Will’s voice finds him like an anchor striking the seabed. The snow is gone and Hannibal sees only black.

The cliff, he remembers a cliff—or perhaps not. But he does remember Will. Battered and bloody, sometimes broken, but never destroyed—

Somewhere, a teacup shatters and Hannibal wonders if he will cut himself on the shards. 

Will came back together— 

_I forgive you._

Will came back to _him_ —

_It’s beautiful._

Warm breath against his neck, a hand clutching at his shoulder. A breathless, endless embrace. An entirely new sort of agony: 

Joy. 

He pushes against the black grip holding him in stillness and silence. 

Where is Will? 

“Hannibal.” He follows the the sound until he can almost see Will’s face, blurred and hazy. His lips are twisted into the hint of a crooked smile. 

Of course, Hannibal thinks. I’m only dreaming.

His eyes are open. He recognizes the bedroom of the house on the bluff. He understands somewhere deep in his mind that he won’t be safe here, not for long—

He loses the thought. He is awake—and Will is _still here._

“You’re smiling,” Hannibal says, voice scrubbed raw from inhaling seawater and coughing it out again. It hurts to breathe and he couldn’t care less. 

"I was wondering if you would wake up,” Will answers. “You did.” His smile draws blood from his punctured cheek. Hannibal lifts a hand and gingerly rubs it away with his thumb. 

Will doesn’t move away from his touch. They have many things to discuss—memories and injuries and decisions to contend with—but they’re together and alive. Truth and Hannibal’s fondest hopes are like far-flung stars finally aligned. 

He’s riddled with pain and sees a long path of troubles ahead, but Hannibal finds that he’s nothing but content. 

Will looks as though he collapsed into the chair beside the bed instead of sitting in it. He’s favoring his wounded shoulder; Hannibal tracks the progress of his pain awareness as it returns to him, no longer stymied by adrenaline and fear. But when Will speaks, it isn’t to express any discomfort. 

“You talked a little, in your sleep,” he says quietly. “What were you dreaming?”

“I’ve forgotten,” Hannibal answers, and it’s true. 

They need to clean their wounds and run as far and as fast as they can. Will leans back in his chair; Hannibal doesn’t move. They sit and breathe in the silence. 

Will’s fingers find their way to Hannibal’s wrist. He grips lightly, just a point of contact. Intimacy without purpose. Hannibal’s eyes slide shut, but he doesn’t dream.

He’s never been more awake.

~*~

_Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades_  
_Past the near meadows, over the still stream,_  
_Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep_  
_In the next valley-glades:_  
_Was it a vision, or a waking dream?_  
_Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?_

_~*~_

**Author's Note:**

> ...is it possible to drown in your own sappiness? Because I think that's what's happening to me as we speak. xD Anyway, I hope this was enjoyable.  <3 Also, I swear the title isn't a joke about Laurence Fishburne. It's not my fault that he was named Morpheus in the Matrix movies, darn it. Greek mythology and pop culture have become nearly as conjoined as Will and Hannibal. :p


End file.
